


Whenever You're Ready

by MaddieWritesStucky (Madeleine_Ward)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Sex, Exes, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Infidelity (not between Steve and Bucky), Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Referenced past break-up, Requited Unrequited Love, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:01:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29259396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madeleine_Ward/pseuds/MaddieWritesStucky
Summary: “Oh...”It’s so soft, the sound Bucky makes. One tiny word, more breath than anything else, yet it somehow holds all the sentiment of 'of course' and 'how have I lived without this', and Steve is ruined for it.He’s sixteen again, realising that want begins and ends with Bucky Barnes.He is seventeen, discovering that the only thing better than getting his hands on Bucky, is getting his mouth on him.He is eighteen, and nineteen, and twenty; bone-deep certain that for him, there will only ever be Bucky.“Stevie,” Bucky sighs. He reaches gentle fingertips to brush the hair back off Steve’s forehead; traces the stretch of Steve’s lips around him with all the tender wonder of their youth....Steve is thirty-nine, and he will never come back from this.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 23
Kudos: 144





	Whenever You're Ready

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE BE AWARE - In case you skimmed the tags, this fic contains a theme of infidelity (not between Steve and Bucky) Skip to the end notes if you want a detailed summary of the situation, and please avoid this story if it will be triggering for you.
> 
> You can also hit me up on tumblr (maddiewritesstucky) if you want to talk! x

“Never changes, does it?” 

It goes straight to Steve’s bones, that voice, all the way down to his marrow. He doesn’t turn around at the sound of it, nor at the muted clunk of footsteps on the dock behind him; slowly closing the distance to where Steve’s standing, thinking. 

Waiting.

He’s been out here long enough to have watched the sun disappear behind the mountainous horizon, taking with it its warmth and making way for the quiet chill of evening to set in. It’s far enough away here, from the music and revelry and reminiscence, that Steve can almost pretend those words are true; that nothing’s changed, that there’s nothing and no one else in existence but the two of them, and the reflection of the moon rising over the lake. 

“Some things do.” 

It comes out bitter, even though Steve’s spent years telling himself he’s not; that the pit in his stomach and the hole in his chest have a different name, a different face. It’s a pointless grief, after so many years. Decades, now, as the banners and balloons up at the reunion were boasting.

He knew what he was doing, coming here tonight. Like pushing on a bruise to make sure it still hurts. And it did, it _does,_ because Bucky is right - the camp hasn’t changed a bit, and Steve might be pushing forty now but his heart is still nineteen; still standing at the end of this dock at sundown waiting for those footsteps behind him, for that warm hand slipping into his and that familiar voice saying his name like it’s music, like it means something.

“Steve…” 

...There’s no hand, and his name is just a name. It aches in the exact place Steve had thought it would.

“She’s pretty, Buck. You look good together.” 

He thinks he hears Bucky’s breath hitch, but it could have been the breeze catching in the trees, or the lick of water at the splintered edge of the dock. It would be easier if it were a lie, might sit sweeter on Steve’s tongue if he were sugar coating something false, something to say for the sake of speaking, but he means it. 

That aches, too.

“I married her,” Bucky says, and the way it sounds like an apology sinks like a lead weight in Steve’s gut.

“I heard.” 

“Steve, will you please look at me?” 

Despair frays the edges of each word, and Steve shakes his head, blows out a ragged breath into the cool night air. 

He _had_ looked at Bucky, had watched him walk in tonight looking every bit like the man Steve always knew he’d grow into - strong, kind-eyed, beautiful; age starting to show in the soft flecks of grey at his temples, but missing from where Steve thought it’d make itself known first. 

“You don’t have smile lines,” he can hear the frown in his own voice as the thought slips past his lips, “always thought you’d have smile lines, way you were always laughing at everything.” 

_“Steve...”_

It’s a sob, this time; unmistakable, and it rips the ground out from beneath Steve. 

There’s a hand on his back, slipping down the column of his spine; a shivering body pressing up close behind him and a forehead dropping against his shoulder. Tears soak wet through the back of Steve’s shirt and two arms circle around his waist, a hold long-forgotten and achingly familiar all at once, and Steve can’t remember how to breathe.

“Bucky,” he begins, though he has no idea where it ends.

His hands come up to cover Bucky’s, threading their fingers together and pulling Bucky’s arms tighter around himself, and it feels nothing like it used to because Steve’s heart wasn’t broken back then. 

When Bucky’s lips find the crook of his neck, that doesn’t feel anything like it used to either, but Steve tilts his head for it anyway; offers up the expanse of his throat like he’d once offered up the rest of his life to the man holding him. 

_All of me,_ he’d said so long ago, _every day of every year I have left. All for you._

Bucky’s hands slip to Steve’s hips, his mouth at the hinge of Steve’s jaw, and it’s so wholly selfish, the way Steve wants this. It’s years of longing and anger and loss made harder by all the ways Bucky _wasn’t_ gone, and the tattered vestiges of Steve’s heart are screaming at him to stop before there’s nothing left of himself to salvage.

“You left me.” 

There’s no emotion left in the statement, not anymore. It bled out years ago, muffled into Steve’s pillow and screamed into voids and hurled at the walls of his too-quiet, too-empty house. 

It’s hollow, now, but Steve feels how heavy it lands in the way Bucky’s entire body curls in on itself behind him.

“I know,” Bucky whispers, his tear-stained cheek tucked against the side of Steve’s face. 

The immensity of pain buried in those two words sinks jagged teeth into the meat of Steve’s heart, and he can’t believe he still bleeds for it after all these years. He knows he should walk away from this, pry himself free of the physical hold Bucky has on him and spend the rest of his days praying those soul-ties unknot themselves too. 

But the wound is open now, if it were ever really closed, and he can’t stop himself from tugging on the busted stitches to see just how raw and messy he can make it. 

“Tell me why,” he turns in the circle of Bucky’s arms, cups the back of Bucky’s neck and makes him meet the full force of his gaze. 

_Give me salt for this wound,_ he’s pleading, and Bucky would have every right to deny him because this conversation has no place here; has no place in any universe where there’s a ring on Bucky’s finger. 

But Bucky came to _him,_ Bucky broke the silence and put his hands on Steve like he’s just as hungry to hurt for this again, and maybe they both just need to bleed it out together. 

“Because we _couldn’t_ ,” Bucky twists his fists tight and frantic into the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “ _I_ couldn’t _..._ Jesus, if my family had found out—” 

“I loved you,” Steve spits, “it was real, and I loved you, and _you_ loved me too.” 

“Fuck, Steve, of course I loved you!” There’s desperation there now, in Bucky’s hands on him; not just clinging but clawing _,_ no space between them for air or reason or good judgement. “You think it didn’t break me, too?” 

“I wouldn’t fucking know _what_ it did to you, Bucky,” Steve runs a fingertip across the plain gold band hugging Bucky’s finger, digging his nail in under the ridge of it, “but it seems like you bounced back just fine.” 

Bucky sucks in a breath, and Steve doesn’t hear him let it go again. He’s doing nothing to mask the anguish on his face as he stares up at Steve, lips parted and eyes welling over; his brow knotted into lines that form all too easy, like they’re well worn at this point, and it’s so _so_ wrong. 

Steve smoothes his thumb over the groove between Bucky’s eyebrows; pushes at it like it’s something he can rub away. 

“Aren’t you happy?” he hears himself ask, hurt and exhausted and terrified of the answer. 

It’s not until Bucky shakes his head, tears spilling anew from his red-rimmed eyes, that Steve realizes there was any part of himself left that was yet to break.

“Not a day of my life, Steve. Not without you.” 

Steve will never be emptier than this, seeing the truth of it all spelled out across Bucky’s face. It had been all the light Steve had left, that small embittered part of himself that’d believed Bucky was better off for the way things had gone. 

What was left, now? It had burned Steve down to ash, losing Bucky, but loving him was inextricable, and thinking he was happy out there was the only reason Steve could sleep at night.

“What do I do with that, Buck?” 

There are tears in Steve’s eyes now too, a tremble in his voice and the dead weight of regret hanging off his words. 

Bucky takes Steve’s face between his hands, too tight to be tender. When he sweeps his thumbs across the tears tracking down Steve’s cheeks, it only spreads them further. 

“Kiss me?” 

Bucky leaves it in the space between them like it’s the only answer he has left, and Steve wishes it didn’t make sense. 

Another place, another time; a different dock and a different sky, and Steve might see the insanity of it, the notion that putting his lips against Bucky’s could be a salve instead of just another scar. 

But they’re here, with those same stars and that same rundown boat shed with it’s broken door, and Steve lets himself close the distance between their mouths, because it’s the only answer _he_ has left, too.

He kisses Bucky with every minute of every day of every wasted year sitting there on the tip of his tongue. He holds Bucky too close and breathes him in too deep, leans all too willing into the pass of Bucky’s hands over his body.

“I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry,” Bucky sobs brokenly, slipping his hands up under the hem of Steve’s shirt to splay across his bare skin. 

Steve shakes his head because he can’t hear that now, with Bucky’s hands on him. Remorse can’t coexist with the warmth of Bucky’s palms and the slick press of his mouth, not when there isn’t even room for moonlight between them. 

“Don’t,” Steve whispers, “don’t tell me that.”

Bucky’s hand finds its way up to the center of Steve’s chest, his fingertips curling into a grip on Steve’s flesh like he can reach in and take hold of what lies beneath. Steve’s not sure there’s anything left in there to grab onto, but he lets Bucky try anyway because if there is, it will only ever belong in his hand. 

“Can I tell you I still think of you?” Bucky kisses the words against Steve’s cheek, trails them down the line of his jaw. “Never stopped thinking about you, Steve.” 

_You should have,_ is what Steve should say, _you’re not mine anymore._

“Someone will see us,” is what Steve does say, even as his fingertips dip beneath the waistband of Bucky’s pants. 

_Someone_ is probably looking for Bucky right now, but there’s no room for that truth here, either. Especially when Bucky pulls back and looks toward the long abandoned boat shed, and then back at Steve.

There are so many opportunities for Steve to choose differently, to tell Bucky to stop. When Bucky takes him by the hand with a plea in his gaze; when he pulls Steve down the dock, and into that boat shed...it’s been a lifetime and Steve is a grown man, too old to be this foolish. But he’s tired, too worn down from years of unmet longing to be anything other than reckless when presented with everything he’s lived without for so painfully long. 

So he doesn’t say a word. 

He lets it happen, and he _helps_ it happen. He raises his arms for Bucky to pull off his shirt, tilts his hips when Bucky works his belt loose and tugs down his pants. 

He strips Bucky bare with his own two hands and pulls him against his own naked body, sobbing open and unashamed for the way it makes him feel whole for the first time in twenty years. 

He maps the planes of Bucky’s body, no longer rounded and softened by youth, but every bit as warm as the memories Steve has clung to, and it shouldn’t feel right because it isn’t; shouldn’t feel so familiar when there’s been decades of distance between them. 

“I miss you.” 

It trips off Steve’s tongue before he can stop it, small and breathless. Of all the three-word truths he could have let slip it isn’t the worst, but Bucky’s wounded noise says that it cuts just as deep. 

He catches Bucky’s lips against his own before Bucky can do anything stupid like say it back; fisting his hands up through Bucky’s hair and pushing his tongue into Bucky’s mouth.

He wants to do this slow, to sink deep enough into it that every touch and every moment cling to him like a brand. But it’s only ever been a headlong tumble, this journey that begins with Bucky’s bare skin against his own, and Steve can feel himself falling the same way he always did.

Open palms turn to pressing fingertips, lips on skin turn to grazing teeth, and a dusty hammock spread across the floorboards. It’s another twist of the knife, the way Bucky’s body still fits beneath his own just as perfect as it ever did, the way Bucky’s spread thighs still make the perfect cradle for his hips. 

Bucky still looks up at him from the flat of his back with the same awe he’d turn upon the night sky, like Steve’s still the only heaven he believes in, and there’s too much gravity in that gaze. There always was, but there was no reason not to get dragged into it back then. 

It’s not until Bucky’s fingertips brush softly over his eyelids, tracing the sweep of his lashes, that Steve realizes he’s closed his eyes.

“What are you thinking about?” Bucky whispers.

Steve almost wants to laugh, because if he were thinking at all, he wouldn’t be here. 

He’s not laid out naked on top of someone else’s husband because he’s _thinking;_ not about to put his mouth and his fingers and his cock where they don’t belong because he’s in his right mind. 

Steve is an exposed nerve, a callous that’s been rubbed raw, and he’ll pretend that’s all he is for as long as it takes to see the man he never stopped loving fall apart beneath him one last time.

He buries his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck and bites down on the softness he finds there, all the answer he intends on giving. There’s no good reason for him to still know the exact spot to sink his teeth into, but he’s not about to waste time pretending he doesn’t remember every last touch point that ever made Bucky lose his mind. 

His right earlobe, the notch of his clavicle, the tender space beneath his ribs. 

His hip bones, and his wrists, and the soft insides of his thighs, sensitive all the way down to his knees.

Maybe after all this time it’s only nostalgia, only because they both want so badly to be who they once were to each other. But Bucky’s body still sings the exact same tune when Steve plays it, tongue and teeth and fingertips in all the right places.

“Please,” Bucky gasps, giving over to it just as easy as he always did. He’s hiding nothing of himself, not in the sprawl of his body or the longing in his gaze, the breathless sounds dripping off his lips. 

He arches into the rub of Steve’s skin against his, splays his thighs wide for Steve’s hips then wider still for Steve’s shoulders, and he looks down the line of his body with all the same rapture when Steve finally takes him into the heat of his mouth.

_“Oh...”_

It’s so soft, the sound Bucky makes. One tiny word, more breath than anything else, yet it somehow holds all the sentiment of _of course,_ and _how have I lived without this,_ and Steve is ruined for it. 

He’s sixteen again, realizing that _want_ begins and ends with Bucky Barnes.

He is seventeen, discovering that the only thing better than getting his hands on Bucky, is getting his mouth on him. 

He is eighteen, and nineteen, and twenty; bone-deep certain that for him, there will only ever be Bucky.

“Stevie,” Bucky sighs. He reaches gentle fingertips to brush the hair back off Steve’s forehead; traces the stretch of Steve’s lips around him with all the tender wonder of their youth.

...Steve is thirty-nine, and he will never come back from this. 

He holds Bucky’s gaze as he swallows him down, watches the play of pleasure across Bucky’s face like it’s still his to behold. 

He sinks all of himself into chasing those awed, quiet sounds that have existed only as echoes for so long, and pretends it’s not the worst kind of cruelty that this act should still feel so sacred; that Bucky should still be that breathless, trembling embodiment of surrender. 

Back arched, thighs twitching, face flushed and lips parted…it’s as devastating as Steve remembers, and so much more so for the fact that he has no right to witness it anymore. 

“Steve, please...” 

Bucky looks down at him imploringly, reaches for him with open hands. 

Steve hollows his cheeks as he pulls off him, slow and tight. He crawls back up Bucky’s body until they’re face to face, until he’s covering Bucky’s body with his own.

“I’m here, Buck.” 

_I’m weak, Buck._

He cups Bucky’s face in his hands, strokes his thumbs across Bucky’s cheekbones and nudges their noses together. He breathes Bucky’s air and kisses his lips, soft and careful until it’s not; until it’s just Steve pouring all his hunger and his longing and his desperation into Bucky’s mouth.

And he _is_ desperate. Every last part of him is breaking for the feel of Bucky’s bare skin, his bare arousal _,_ rubbing up against his own; for the responsibility of holding Bucky’s vulnerability and his nakedness and his pleasure in the palms of his hands.

“God, it’s been so long,” Steve’s voice splinters around the words, around the sobs that want to keep coming, “it’s been _so long,_ Bucky...”

He rolls his hips heavy and deep, slips his hands beneath Bucky’s shoulders to keep them locked tight together. There’s sweat beading between them, spit and precum slicking their skin, and every promise they ever made weighing dense in the air. 

Bucky’s fingernails are sunk deep enough into his back that Steve can feel the half-moon imprints forming; Bucky’s legs hitched up around his hips and soft moans passing back and forth between their open mouths. 

Steve had always wondered what this must look like from the outside, the way they get lost in one another. The quiet gasps and heavy breaths, the pleasured sounds that catch between their lips. Bodies shaking, hands clinging, eyes open because it’s the closest thing to heaven you’d ever see. 

It’s immensity was always buried in the slowness of it all, but it’s as consuming and inevitable as it ever was. 

He knows Bucky’s close before Bucky tells him he is; can feel it thrumming through Bucky’s body beneath him. He knows he shouldn’t watch it happen, shouldn’t sharpen that mental picture back into focus when it had taken so long to blur its edges in the first place. 

He shouldn’t moan brokenly into Bucky’s mouth and rock harder against him; shouldn’t push up onto his hands and fix his gaze squarely on Bucky’s face.

 _‘Shouldn’t’_ doesn’t mean a goddamn thing anymore.

“Come with me?” Bucky pleads, eyes glassy and body strung taut. 

He presses a trembling hand to Steve’s heart and the other to Steve’s neck, holding his racing pulse and his heartbeat in his hands just the same as he had the first time they made love, and Steve comes apart at the seams.

It’s unending, that wash of raw feeling. It’s galaxies inside his rib cage and oceans in his veins, and wildfire curling around the base of his spine. He breathes Bucky’s name, spills all over his stomach, and when Bucky follows him over he ducks down to drink the wonder of it right off Bucky’s lips. 

The quiet weighs so much heavier, as they lay pressed together in the aftermath. 

Steve looks down at the man beneath him, watches his breathing settle and the flush subside from his cheeks, and the ache of the past suddenly pales in comparison to what lies ahead. 

What exists for them beyond this moment, here and now? Bucky’s face is cradled in Steve’s hands and his nakedness is sheltered by Steve’s body, but even this was never Steve’s to offer. It’s time and touch already stolen, and the rhythmic lap of water against the dock outside may as well be the ticking of a clock.

“What happens now, Buck?” he asks, knowing there’s no comfort to be found in the answer. 

Bucky shakes his head, touching gentle fingertips to Steve’s cheek and searching Steve’s gaze. 

“I don’t know.”

The night air is cold against Steve’s back, all the warmth that had seemed to wrap so close around them dissipating. 

He slowly moves off of Bucky and gathers up their clothes, redressing himself with fingers that fumble weak and uncoordinated with the fabric that had been so very easy to take off. 

“...If you asked me to leave her, I would.” 

Bucky’s voice comes small from behind him, but the words take up every last inch of space in the room. 

Steve turns to look at him, and there’s something so painfully close to hope on his face, it makes Steve’s chest ache. 

“I can’t do that, Bucky,” he rasps, “it can’t be up to me.” 

The regret in it is palpable, the ‘ _I wish it was’_ joining the thousand other things that live, unsaid, on the tip of Steve’s tongue.

_I am so much yours that it hurts_

_I will never stop hoping for you_

_I will love you for the rest of my life_

It’s years too late, for all of it. But those words still throw themselves against the backs of Steve’s teeth, because if not now, then when?

“Bucky, I—”

_“James?”_

...The soft call comes from outside, carried on the breeze from a little ways off. 

There’s nothing in it, no suspicion, no concern. Just someone looking for the person they’ve lost, wondering where they’ve gone to. 

Steve’s stomach sinks, and the clock runs out.

Bucky looks at him, eyes wide and lips falling open like he intends to speak. No sound comes out, but Steve understands all the same - Bucky’s gaze always said more than words ever could, anyway. 

“You should go back, Buck.” 

Steve says it gently, though neither of them deserve that kindness after what they’ve done. He picks up his sweater, and he leaves what’s left of his heart on the floor, because he’s got no use for it without the man he’s about to walk away from. 

“If you ever…” Steve starts, and stops himself, shaking his head softly. His gaze sticks to the spot just in front of Bucky’s feet, his body half turned toward the door. 

“...You know where I’ll be,” he says instead, and then he gathers up his shoes in his hands and steps back out into the evening, because he’s no more capable of saying ‘goodbye’ to Bucky now than he was back then.

—

It’s a half hour walk home along the edge of the lakeshore, but it takes Steve hours; tears washing a salt-sting down his cheeks and his feet in the too-cold water the entire way.

It doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he deserves, that frigid needling against his skin and the stones underfoot. But the greater punishment will come, he knows.

When he gets home, and has to live the rest of his life knowing not only what he lost, but what he did to try and dull the ache of it. 

When he gets home, to that rambling, too-quiet house on the lake edge, where Bucky’s touch is set into the very foundations.

The roof they had helped Steve’s dad patch, the summer Steve turned eighteen; the creaking window ledge that would betray Bucky’s midnight visits to Steve’s bedroom, and that same kitchen table where they’d try not to blush at each other’s gaze. 

The porch swing where they’d watch the sun go down; every wall and doorframe they’d kissed up against when Steve’s parents weren’t around to see it; every tree they ever made love or fell asleep beneath...

He may not have seen Bucky in the flesh in almost twenty years, but there hasn’t been a day of Steve’s life since that he hasn’t felt the echo of his presence, and now it will hum under his skin the same way it always has in his house. 

The sky is awash with stars he can’t bear to look at by the time he makes it home, feet numb and shivering all over. 

He trudges the path from the lakeshore back up to his house, clearing the tree line and stepping into the moonlight spilling full and bright over his yard, over his homestead. 

Over the unfamiliar car parked in his dirt-track driveway, and the figure sitting, waiting, on his porch. 

“...Bucky?” 

His body slows in its tracks, stops halfway across the yard and won’t carry him any further forward. 

Bucky makes no move to close the distance between them either, save to stand slowly on unsteady legs and step down onto the silver-lit lawn. 

“Hey, Steve.”

His arms are curled around himself, his shoulders rounded and his feet shifting on the grass. Even in the moonlight, Steve can see the swell of too many tears shed around Bucky’s eyes, and he’d look like he was about to run if not for the set of his jaw; the unwavering hold of his gaze on Steve’s.

“Buck, what are you...how long have you—”

“I did it.” 

Bucky’s voice cracks - not like a heart breaking, but like a weight falling away, like a world upending, and it hits Steve like a blow to the back of the knees.

“You did what, Bucky?” 

He knows what he’s hearing, what Bucky has just laid before him, but he asks anyway because it can’t be _that_ ; that terrible, selfish thing that Steve has dreamed of and hoped for and hated himself for wanting all these years. 

Bucky can’t be here, standing under the light of the full moon, hours after they made love that was all passion and no integrity, telling Steve _that._

Bucky takes a step forward, just one. Not close enough to touch, but close enough for Steve to see that he’s shaking.

“I told her, Steve. I told her what I did tonight...told her the truth about me.” 

“The truth...” 

Steve’s chest is crushing in on itself, the air between them so thin and fragile he’s afraid to breathe it in. 

Bucky wraps himself tighter in the circle of his own arms, shaking his head and dropping his gaze to the ground. 

“I was scared, Steve,” he whispers, “back then...We were kids, and I was _so_ scared of what it meant, the way I felt about you. And I thought I could... _make_ myself feel that, again. For someone else. Someone who was...” 

He blows out a shuddering breath, kicking at the ground in front of him.

“...Someone that everybody else would accept. But I couldn’t, Steve. I tried, I tried _so_ fucking hard, and I thought that if I got married, then maybe...maybe it’d be better, because I’d have no choice but to love her. But I just...I couldn’t feel that again. I couldn’t, because I never fuckin’ _stopped_ feeling it, for _you.”_

Steve aches, in every part of his being, all the way down in his soul. He stares at the man he’s loved his whole life, and he aches for the both of them; for the half-lives they’ve been living, tied to one another with string that had stretched when it would have been kinder to snap. 

“I got it so wrong, Steve,” Bucky sobs, his eyes screwing shut against free-flowing tears. “I chose _so_ wrong. And I’m so sorry, I’m _so_ fucking sorry…”

Steve’s body moves without thought, reaches and wraps itself around Bucky’s trembling frame; tight like he can save Bucky from this inevitable unraveling. 

“Jesus, Bucky,” he shakes his head, heartbreak spilling raw into his voice, “I’m sorry, I’m _sorry.”_

Bucky’s face is tucked into the crook of his neck and his tears are catching cold against Steve’s skin. But Steve’s own are falling into Bucky’s hair, and his hands are shaking too hard for their strokes up and down Bucky’s back to be any real comfort, and neither of them move to change a thing about it. 

“I’ve thought of you _every_ day,” the confession slips quiet from Steve’s lips, “I’ve _missed_ you, _every_ day.” 

Bucky gasps a hitching breath into Steve’s shirt, holds tight to the fabric at his back. 

“Fuck, I got more to make up for here than I’ve got years left,” he shudders, pulling back to find Steve’s eyes. “I got no right to ask you for anything ever again, and I know I gotta put some things right first, get myself right, but...but would you ever...could _we,_ ever…” 

Steve is nodding. Before Bucky’s even gotten the words out, Steve’s nodding. 

There are so many questions still to be asked and answered, so many conversations to be had and blows that are yet to land in the aftermath. 

The road that lies ahead is unpaved and unmapped, and the sunrise will shed light on realities they haven’t even considered. 

But none of that changes what Steve knows to be true, here and now. 

He knows that the window ledge still creaks, that that tree still bears more fruit than he knows what to do with, and the roof hasn’t once leaked, not during a single storm.

He knows that in any lifetime, any versions of themselves...they _could._

“Whenever you’re ready, Bucky,” _come home when you’re ready, Bucky,_ “you know where I’ll be.” 

—

It takes time, just like Steve knew it would. 

It takes tears, and words that are just as hard to hear as they are to say. 

It’s wounds reopened just to be stitched back together better, _right_ this time; stitched to heal instead of just to survive. 

Bucky is gone again, for a while, but his absence isn’t the bleak void it once was. It’s time apart for the sake of a life together, for both of them to rebuild what was broken and find a new sense of ‘whole’. 

It’s Bucky finding his feet as the person he’s always been, and learning to speak his truth. It’s untangling himself from the life he was never meant to live, and finding forgiveness where it’s needed. 

It’s Steve ripping up those floorboards that creak, and it’s letting himself sleep. It’s replacing the wallpaper that was more peel than pattern, and it’s teaching himself to roll with the waves of joy and grief until he can sit just as comfortably with both.

It takes time; eight months and twenty-one days worth of it. 

But they heal, and Bucky finds his way home. 

And this time, it sticks.

**Author's Note:**

> Summary - Steve and Bucky had a relationship in their teens/early twenties, which Bucky walked away from due to internalized homophobia. Twenty years later, they see each other at a reunion, and although Bucky is (unhappily) married, he and Steve have an emotionally charged confrontation and have sex, confessing they never stopped loving each other. The story has a happy ending.


End file.
